Switching voices - @gdsteam

To coincide with the recent release of the next iteration of GOV.UK, Louise Kidney, Digital Engagement Lead explains why we are changing the name of our Twitter account and what you can expect to see from the renamed @GDSTeam Twitter account.

A long time ago, in a far away land, there was @alphagov - a Twitter account created by Tom Loosemore to share with the wider developer community the learning which happened during the early stages of the GOV.UK project.

This then evolved into @govuk which was created to talk about the work being done by the GDS team as a whole on the then alpha GOV.UK project. At that point GOV.UK was the main project and the groups of people that the Twitter account was aimed at was quite clear. Interested parties were predominantly those who understood what an alpha release was, who were interested in digital government or developers interested in how some of the massive challenges the development team faced were being overcome.

But we have grown and changed and because of our higher profile we are now receiving service delivery queries from citizens which are not within the current remit of @govuk to answer.

As a result, we will be changing the name of our Twitter account form @govuk to @gdsteam. The rename on the surface is a minor thing but it indicates a shift back to the accounts roots. We like to share at GDS - our code, our thoughts, our policy, our designs and our strategy and this will continue via this blog but also much more on our Twitter account.

Instead of one moderator looking after the Twitter account we intend for representatives from all our teams to have access to the account, using their initials to sign off tweets, allowing multiple concurrent conversations to happen during the day, but also allowing people to speak to others who are experts in their field, to ask questions and to feedback instantly. We look forward to continuing and growing the conversations @gdsteam and look forward to continuing to the dialogue that started with Tom a long time ago, in a faraway land.